During the past two weeks, I have found myself strangely sad. No matter what I am doing, if I am in my apartment, I turn on the TV to CNN or Headline News and try to make sense of the world in which we live.
Until last weekend, my version of college football amounted to chili, chips and dip and my brother's friends cheering in our living room.
It seemed like a good idea at the time." This quote pretty much sums up my month-long trip to Europe this summer, and the reasoning behind it.
If you ask a bunch of little girls what they want to be when they grow up, odds are many of them will say they want to be ballerinas.
"Democracy is the dream of every Iranian," Religious Studies Prof. Abdulaziz Sachedina said. Students of universities in Tehran go so far as to whisper that they want the Americans to come, that America "did good" in Afghanistan and in Iraq. In the Dome Room of the Rotunda, so full that some students had to be turned away, Sachedina delivered a hopeful and sometimes controversial lecture on recent Iranian elections and the possibility for a true democracy in the Middle East. But not all Iranians hope for the arrival of American troops.
P1. Sometimes it becomes necessary to break the boundaries of conventional social norms and do something completely different and random.
When I was a first year at a university far, far away from here -- a couple of islands deep in the South Pacific named New Zealand, to be somewhat more exact -- I was enrolled in a course that proposed to "engage" with relations between religious communities.
You first years think you can just waltz in here and own the place? Well, you can't. Edgar Allan Poe thought he could do that back in 1826, and he lasted all of one semester.
What do University students typically do during the summer? Most would say internships, jobs or travel. The students who spent this summer in a program called Bike and Build, however, would give a far different answer. Imagine climbing the Rocky, Sawtooth and Appalachian mountain ranges.
Over the past week, I've learned two valuable lessons: ISIS is for chumps, not champs, and "Final Registration" is not the Man trying to keep me down. However, I combined the writing skills of my English major and the lying negotiation skills of my politics major to create the ultimate schedule. My first plan of attack was to blitz e-mail all the professors in both departments. Professor Shakespeare, I am a third-year English major with no English classes.
Look in the mirror. What do you see? I'm not asking you to do any self reflection or any of that super-Freudian-psychoanalytical-everything-has-something-to-do-with-your-relationship-with-your-father-or-your-mother-or-the-pet-goat-you-had-when-you-were-eight thing. I just want you to take a look at what you're wearing.
How do you answer the question, "How are you?" or "What's up?" in the short time it takes to pass someone on Grounds? Students constantly are running around to make their next class, meeting or social event.
I think I'm gonna try a running theme throughout the columns this year [which I'm sure will only last a few weeks] of highlighting "This Week's Favorite Awkward Moment." If The Cavalier Daily production team could get some fancy font for that title, I'd really appreciate it.
It's no surprise nowadays to hear about another starlet who has "magically" lost twenty pounds in what seemed to be less than a week.
M ost University students would agree there's a fascinating beauty and appeal to Charlottesville.
So I have three big, slobbery chocolate Labradors at home. One is incredibly old, one doesn't really like people and the third one is dumber than a box of rocks. And I miss them terribly. There's nothing worse than an unrequited dog-lover, either.
As older and wiser fourth years writing a column about "relationships," we probably should be filling the first 125 lines allotted to us by The Cavalier Daily with profound advice.
Each week, The Cavalier Daily asks a student 25 questions and allows him or her to eliminate five of them.
How would you decide between American citizenship and loyalty to your native country? This is the decision that Korean male students at the University must face.
